The need to identify oneself to access services is great. It is easy to think of numerous examples encountered on a daily basis—PC logon, Internet sites, airport check-in, credit card purchases, access to office buildings, hotel rooms, conference halls, classrooms, subways, all the way down to the keys to start the car and open the front door to the house. However, no standardization has emerged and as such. This causes great inconveniences for the user due to the burdens of carrying multiple cards and keys, and the need to be able to recall multiple usernames and passwords. In addition to inconvenience, the methods in common use today do not prove identity at all—they merely prove that the user is in possession of a copy of a token. These are issues that governments grapple with in terms of national security, and consumers must encounter because of rampant identity fraud.
Smart cards are one proposed solution. Smart cards are cards that include some processing power and memory. Smart cards taken out for each use, inserted into a reader. In some instances, the user may additionally need to type in a personal identification number (PIN) to access the data/location using the smart card. All this user action is not just time consuming but also requires that the user carry a card. In general, the card readers are also carried. The card can be easily forgotten in the reader or lost.
On the other end of the spectrum, fingerprint recognition is an extremely convenient way to perform identification that has recently become cost-effective to deploy, but security, privacy and scalability issues remain for trusted use beyond local client logon.